French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners,” starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, is a thriller revolving around the kidnapping of two young girls.

Jackman plays Keller Dover, the father of one of them, a carpenter and a survivalist with a bit of a religious bent. Gyllenhaal is Loki, a local police detective who is heading the investigation. Though intent on finding the girl, Loki is a by-the-book guy who is haunted by his own childhood, which is evident in a facial tic and his homemade tattoos.

Early on, a suspect (Paul Dano) is picked up but is quickly released because the police have no evidence. This doesn’t sit well with Dover, played with an intense hulking presence by Jackman. A recovering alcoholic, the carpenter soon decides to take action of his own. What ensues is a taut, violent drama that asks the question: How far will you go to save someone you love? Dover’s answer is disquieting.

‘Lone Ranger’ misfires

Disney’s “The Lone Ranger” was a box office train wreck. It starred Johnny Depp as a strange version of Tonto and Armie Hammer as the Masked Man. Actually the movie wasn’t all that bad, but at a reported cost of at least $225 million, mediocre wasn’t going to cut it from critics.

Directed by Gore Verbinski, who along with über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer turned a theme-park ride into the moneymaking “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, “The Lone Ranger” was probably not a good idea for a summer blockbuster anyway. A Western in this comic-book era wasn’t likely to have legs. So the film will go down as a curious excessive misfire, but “excessive” could be used to describe a lot of summer films.

Ordinary ‘Elysium’

There was some hope for director Neill Blomkamp’s summer film “Elysium,” a sci-fi tale about the haves — who live in a perfect environment above the Earth — and the have-nots, who are condemned to a nearly unlivable surface of the planet.

It stars Matt Damon as Max, a worker bee living in a diseased and overpopulated world in 2154. Blomkamp, who made “District 9,” nicely sets up the contrast between the two communities, but he never gets around to doing much with it — no social commentary, no cautionary ideas, not much to think about except the special effects. Instead, “Elysium” turns into just another space shoot-out.

Jodie Foster does the villain thing well, and Damon proves a suitably cranky hero. Somebody likable dies, somebody likable lives. It ends as serviceable entertainment, but started with more ambition.

Advertisement

Moody ‘Saints’

In David Lowery’s dark thriller “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” set in 1970s Texas, Rooney Mara plays a young lover named Ruth. When her boyfriend, Bob (Casey Affleck), commits a crime, the two end up in a shoot-out in which she wounds a deputy (Ben Foster). Bob takes the fall though, and goes to prison. The pregnant Ruth goes free and eventually raises their child.

That serves as a prelude for the rest of the film, which involves Bob’s escape from prison five years later and his attempt to get back across Texas to Ruth, who waits, unsure of her feelings. Meanwhile, the deputy pines for her, not knowing she was the one who shot him.

Moody and atmospheric, “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” is helped by some nice performances by Mara, Affleck and Foster.

Good bets

The fourth season of FX’s “Justified,” which returns for a fifth in January, and the recent ratings-grabber, NBC’s “The Sound of Music Live!” starring Carrie Underwood as Maria, are out on Tuesday.